Palmer: B.C. Premier Christy Clark tries to show she’s on top of the Enbridge file

VICTORIA — For a moment Monday, it sounded as if Premier Christy Clark were preparing to climb down off the fence and declare a position for or against the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

Clark started off a late-morning press conference in her office in the provincial capital with an announcement that her government would be updating its stance on the controversial line in the next few days.

“You are going to get more information about what we will be presenting on and intervening on in the National Energy Board hearings,” said Clark, referencing the current hearings on the project by the national regulator. “You will be hearing some of the substance of the interventions we will be making, from the minsters responsible.”

Though she assured reporters that the province had been working on this file “for months,” there was no denying the sense of urgency supplied by last week’s devastating report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Enbridge’s Keystone-Kops-worthy handling of an oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in July 2010.

“Everybody’s more concerned,” the premier conceded. “Everybody wants to know that if they [Enbridge] hope to operate in B.C they are going to do it in a responsible way.

“I don’t think that the NTSB report gives anyone any comfort that Enbridge was operating in a responsible way in Kalamazoo ... Staff have been reviewing that since it’s been released. Some of the questions we’ll be asking will arise out that.”

Coupled with what Clark said about the company when the NTSB report was released last week — “if they think they’re going to operate like that in B.C., forget it” — it sounded as if she were reconsidering her initial vow to take no position on the project until the NEB completes its review next year.

What will be the nature of the government’s intervention in the hearings? reporters asked.

“You’ll find out in the next few days.”

When could British Columbians expect to hear from the premier whether or not her government supports the project?

“In the next few days.”

Was she climbing down from the fence?

“You are going to have to wait and find out in the next few days.”

By that point, at least one member of the press gallery was preparing to send out a bulletin advising that the B.C. Liberals were, indeed, going to take a stand on the pipeline in the next few days.

Then Clark clarified her intentions.

“What I said was wait a few days and you’ll find out more about what we are going to be doing with respect to intervening in the process ... I would urge patience on this one.”

So what should the news alert say?

“We are going to wait for this process to unfold and find out what the facts are about the risks and the benefits so that we can respect the process which is something that precious few politicians in this province seem to want to do. They seem to prefer to play politics with it.

“Second, what ministers are going to be doing in the next few days is put some meat on the bones of those positions. It is not going to be a change of position but it will be a lot more detailed in anticipation of the fact that we are finally getting to the stage where we are going to be able to intervene in the process.”

The deadline has long passed for submitting evidence to the hearings. So presumably provincial ministers are planning to engage in cross-examination of the proponent?

“That’s right,” she replied. “I don’t know if the ministers will be. But the government representatives will be engaging in the process. In advance of engaging in the process as interveners, we’ll give you some more information about the basis on which we will do that. You’ll see that in the next few days.”

After that back and forth, I was left wondering whether there’d been any substantive change in the government’s mostly passive response to the Enbridge proposal.

More likely, the premier simply wanted to make it appear that she and her government were on top of the file in the wake of widespread public dismay here in B.C. over the report out of the U.S.

All those wait-and-sees? They must be scrambling inside the government to pull together something — anything — to dispel the notion that the premier and her ministers have been dozing on this file.

It will be instructive to see whether the promised release of “information” includes a copy of a 30-page technical assessment of the project, prepared by government staff as part of the internal review.

After the existence of the report was disclosed last month by reporter Justine Hunter of the Globe and Mail — she had it sitting on the desk of Environment Minister Terry Lake — both the Opposition and first nations opposed to Enbridge attempted to obtain a copy.

As of this week, the B.C. Liberals were fending off requests to release it, according to Rob Fleming, Opposition environment critic.

Perhaps the Liberals are holding back because the contents would provide a clue as to the position they will eventually be taking on the Northern Gateway project.

Then again, at a mere 30 pages, it may simply be evidence of the lack of depth in the government’s analysis of this massive and controversial undertaking.

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Palmer: B.C. Premier Christy Clark tries to show she’s on top of the Enbridge file

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